Layout Update - #22

Operational Organization
I recently was privileged to attend an operating session at Gary Peterson’s Salt Lake Southern layout. It got me to thinking about further developing the operational aspect of the Northern Montana Line. The NML will never achieve the operating characteristics of the Salt Lake Southern. Each new layout that I operate on adds to what I need to do to the NML. The majority of the rolling stock for the NML resides off the layout. I found that what few “Operating Sessions” I had done on the NML were being hampered by the constant searching for the right cars to use on the staging trains. The solution for this problem was to sit down and spend some time organizing the rolling stock into a somewhat logical manner. I say “somewhat” logical because it is not finish, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

The photo below show the storage cabinets that I use for the storing of off-layout rolling stock. Each cabinet has nine drawers and each drawer can hold approximately 12 40’ cars or 8 50’ & 60’ cars. That gives me plenty of storage for right now. Each drawer was lined with the rubberized grip shelf liner. This will keep the cars from rolling around when the drawer is opened. The only draw back to using this material is that it will latch onto the car if it laid on it’s side. If left that way for long enough it might damage the paint.

Each cabinet (unit) has been given a number along with each drawer. These read as U1D1, U1D2, U1D3 and so on all the way to U4D9 at the end. In each drawer only cars of certain types are grouped together such as 40’ box cars or 50’ & 60’ boxcars or covered hoppers and so on. Now came the really boring part. I went through all of the car cards and found the drawer that the car was located in. On the car card was written the appropriate unit and drawer numbers. You can see an example of what I’m doing in the photo below on the right. This will save a great deal of time when adding or removing rolling stock from the layout. The only thing left do is group similar drawers together for more efficiency. What a way to spend an afternoon of model railroading!